Bibliography
Bibliography
Like its counterparts in Greek and Roman mythology, the Sumerian Pantheon was organized hierarchically in a pyramid structure. Although, contemporary views of the Sumerian hierarchy are much less stable -- to be diplomatic, less consistent to be blunt. Whereas Zeus is regarded as the uncontested leader of the Olympians, his counterpart in Sumerian mythology, Enlil, does not enjoy such unanimous autonomy as the pantheon's divine head of state.
However, this difference can be viewed as much as a result from modern perspective as from any significant perceptual difference in their respective time periods. That is to say, through the high volume and relative ease of accessibility of ancient Greek sources, in addition to a basic unity of origin -- the same few Greek city-states were responsible for a disproportionately large percentage of source material on the pantheon and history in general -- modern scholars are left with a comparatively unified conception of the Greek pantheon. In the case of Enlil, however, we have comparatively little source material from Sumer.
In addition, the time frames between ancient Greek documentation and Sumerian documentation are far from comparable. Mythological sources from ancient Greece deal with three civilizations: Minoan, Mycenaean and a Dorian-Mycenaean blend, what we know today as Ancient Greece -- the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic. Minoan documents, although unearthed, cannot be intelligibly deciphered. Still, Mycenaean culture seems to indicate a close association with the displaced Minoans, and thanks to many Mycenaean archaeological discoveries, historians have been able to pinpoint Mycenae as the focal point for much of the mythology of a more accessible, ancient Greece -- the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic eras.
Reasonably, then, the mythology we know of as ancient Greek can be categorized as Mycenaean-Greek, with a probable heavy Minoan influence. This places the time frame for Greek mythology somewhere between 1400 BCE to sometime in the late Roman Republic/early Empire. A conservative estimate of 1400 years. Compare that to Sumerian mythology, with events speculated anywhere from 3500 BCE (first recorded) to approximately 2000 BCE -- another 1500 year span. However, the sources for Sumerian mythology often date from 2500 BCE to 900 BCE (an additional 1100 years. Or as American Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer put it, "[The source material] consists primarily of some three thousand tablets and fragments inscribed in the Sumerian language and dated approximately 1750 B.C." (1961). Sumerian culture is believed to have existed at least since the end of the fifth millennium, pushing the social consciousness of mythological events depicted therein to a conservative 4000 BCE. All in all, what we generally refer to as Sumerian mythology encompasses the mythology of Southern and, to a lesser extent, Northern Mesopotamia from 4000 BCE to 900 BCE. Of course, the Sumerian civilization, itself, ceased to exist sometime around the turn of the second century BCE, at which time significant alterations were made to an already extant Sumerian mythology.
Discrepancies of time were not the only factors separating Sumerian and Greek mythology, however. There are also more immediate concerns. The very nature and origin of Sumerian language are even more salient. There are two primary problems in deciphering Sumarian texts: One is "Linguistic, the difficulties presented by the grammar and vocaulary of the Sumerian Language; and the textual, the problems arising out of the physical characteristics of our source material" (Kramer 1961). The physical characteristics of most of the source material are clay tablets. Perhaps a more appropriate way to phrase this physiology is the lack of physical characteristics. That is to say, very few, if any, tablets recovered from Sumerian dig sites are recuperated whole, with no broken or missing pieces and no inscription eroded away through the machinations of time and the middle east's unstable atmosphere and arid climate.
Needless to say, finding a reference point for the decipherment of Sumerian is not an enviable task. "Sumerian is neither a semitic nor an Indo-European language. It belongs to the so-called agglutinative type of languages exemplified by Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish . . . none of these has any closer affiliation with Sumerian, and the latter [Sumerian] . . . stands alone and unrelated to any known language living or dead" (Kramer 1961). In other words, without substantial help, Sumerian is so far removed from any modern language that it would be completely impenetrable without substantial aide. Fortunately, Sumerian did not die out all at once. Although the culture may have slowly dwindled away into obscurity, the language faired a similar fate to that of Latin after the dissolution of the Roman Empire. It lived on in administrative intuitions for a time and was the primary language of Christian ritual and biblical scholars through the seventeenth century. Even today, many church services around the world continue to be administered in Latin, not the native tongue of its worshipers. In much the same way, Sumerian faded into the socio-economic and religious backdrops of Akkad and Babylon, taking on -- again, like Latin -- a stronger presence in religion than in other areas. For that very purpose, Akkadian and Babylonian scribes created Akkadian-Sumerian dictionaries. These numerous dictionaries, unearthed in the same collapsed libraries, temples, and palaces that stored the mythic poetry of Sumer, were the key modern scholars needed to unlock the secrets of decoding Sumerian, at least on a very basic, literal level. In effect, archeaologists came upon many small "Rosetta Stones," which allowed them to transliterate and translate this most ancient of Mesopotamian writing.
At what point, exactly, this mythology ceases to be Sumerian and becomes that of another culture -- Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian -- is murky water in which few experts are willing to tread. Thus, the Sumerian pantheon -- and Sumerian mythology in general -- appears less consistent than its counterparts in Greece and Rome because 1) it covers a much longer time period, at least half of which was without the benefit of written documentation, 2) because the pantheon was, essentially, transposed from one culture to another to another, each changing it in its own way, and 3) because the majority of extant sources on Sumerian mythology are, in fact, derived from subsequent cultures that assimilated Sumerian culture and, in doing so, transposed Sumerian mythology unto their own, with ever-so-many alterations.
Sumero-Akkadian
Sumero-Akkadian Mythology is, perhaps, the more appropriate term for
Sumerian Mythology. The large majority of source material scholars
use to analyze Sumerian mythology, if not Akkadian, almost certainly
developed under strong Akkadian influence. Most of the recovered
Sumerian texts were recorded during or after the reign of Sargon, an
Akkadian king who conquered all of Akkad and Sumer, thus bringing
Sumer under Akkadian control for the duration of his dynasty. The
Sumerian documents recorded during the Third Dynasty of Ur (an era of
Sumerian revival following Sargon's Akkadian empire) felt the strong
influence of Akkadianization which, no doubt, took place under
Sargon's regime.
Although it is not a perfect analogy, it may be helpful to view this cultural shift as analogous to Hellenization during the reigns of Phillip and Alexander of Macedon. The focus, though, should not be on how Hellenization affected the Mediterranean World (as is often the case when historians discuss Hellenization) but, rather, how the influx of conquering Macedonians affected Mainland Greece -- the original Greek city-states. From a structuralist point of view, Sumer and mainland Greece shared the same fate: both were cultural centers so highly advanced that their systems of writing were wholly adopted by their conquerors.
We know the mythology of Greece was also adopted by the conquering Macedonians (with the obligatory additions necessary to legitimize Macedonia as "Greek"). The same scenario is likely in regards to Sumerian Mythology (or Sumero-Akkadian Mythology). The few surviving documents that have been unearthed, which antedate a strong Akkadian presence in Sumer (e.g. Inanna's Descent to the Underworld), do not present us with any evidence from which to counter the same assumption from being made about Sumerian Mythology. This theory, however, depends strongly upon evidence of omission (there has been no evidence yet unearthed to counter its plausibility), which is always shaky ground to stand on. In this case, however, considering the model set forth by cuneiform's adoption throughout Mesopotamia and the documented use of Sumerian, itself, as the sanctified religious language for centuries after it ceased to be spoken in the streets of Sumer, this theory is not just plausible, it is probable.